Tag Archives: swiss chard

Spring is here in San Diego and it’s time for me to write the wrap up about my first time growing cool season crops. The picture was taken in mid January. The garden was full of nice green healthy plants. The weather was still pretty ‘cold’ in January (I know, I’m a sissy from MN who can’t tolerate cold weather anymore). The chard did really well as you can see, and the broccoli was very productive.

In early January, I received the Gardener of the Month sign. Grant had come down and asked if we ever had the sign in our garden, and two days later it was. There weren’t too many people with gardens full of cool season crops but I still felt good getting the award. When the sign was moved 2 weeks ago, it looked like a gopher hole and I was looking for a tunnel and realized it was from the sign.

Here is the right half of my garden in the middle of February. You can see that the lettuce is doing great. I pick it every other day and can eat a salad a day with it. The chard is huge, and you can see a brussel sprout plant with monster leaves behind the white planter box. This plant grew big, but the brussel sprouts didn’t stay compact, they were ‘open’. We ended up taking this plant out since we weren’t getting any sprouts. Below is a picture of the one plant that gave us good sprouts.

Here is a shot of the left half of the garden. The picture above is of the plant in the lower left corner of this picture. This plant gave us 30 or so brussel sprouts before the aphids took over. We just ripped it out 2 weeks ago. You can see the artichoke plant is growing out of control. After clearing out some of the lower leaves, I realized there are 3 plants growing there…and now it is starting to fruit. The broccoli is also doing well. It is continuing to give us side shoots. We eat broccoli at least twice a week and it tastes delicious picked fresh out of the garden. I’ll post pictures below.

Here is a picture of our romanesco broccoli growing. This tasted great! We used this recipe to cook it. I will definitely be growing this again next fall.

Next season I will not be growing cauliflower. It only puts out the single head, attracts aphids and other bugs, and frankly, I don’t really care for it. I need to remember that if I don’t like it, no need to grow it, especially if it brings bad bugs to the garden.

I’m still having issues with gophers… They are attacking my onions now, and have taken out more lettuce and swiss chard. No matter how many I trap, there’s always more.The photos below are of a onion that just has the leaves above, and two dead gophers.

I should mention that I bought an egg timer to help make hard boiled eggs out of the eggs we get from the garden. I bought this on amazon to make it easy to know when they’re done. If you eat a lot of hard boiled eggs, you should get this:

Today I harvested lots of greens from the indoor planter box. In the pile of greens contains baby swiss chard, lettuce, basil, spinach, and cilantro.

I used the baby basil and spinach to make a 3 egg omelet. The taste of the spinach and basil was amazing. The crispness of the spinach and spiciness of the basil went nicely together. I turned the rest of the greens into a side salad for my eggs.

To make the omelet I used 3 fresh Larry Schultz’s organic eggs. I will let one of the masters of french cooking take it from here!

Here is a photo of my garden 2 weeks after my last post. You can see that the swiss chard has been demolished by gophers, as well as the carrots and beets. This is when I started to research gopher trapping. I had to go out and buy to Macabee gopher traps. I asked my Grandpa if he ever had any trouble with gophers and he told me that his mom was quite the avid gopher trapper. He explained to me how to set the traps. It’s pretty simple to do. You have to find a fresh gopher mound, and then use a stake, rod, etc and poke in the ground to find which directions the tunnels run. Once you do that, you dig a whole and set a trap in each direction. Make sure you tie your traps together and then stake them down once they are set. This is to prevent the gopher from running off with your trap if it doesn’t kill it. You should cover the whole with a brick or paver once the traps are set. Then all you have to do is wait… Here is a link that might explain this better, it also has pictures.

Here is one of the gophers that I caught. After they finished off the chard, carrots and beets, they moved to the other side of the garden and started working on our romaine. This first picture is of the gopher in the tunnel where I caught him. You can see that I have twine tied to the trap and that is connected to the other trap that was facing the other direction.

I didn’t realize how small gophers were. I went to the University of Minnesota and am a proud alumni of the Golden Gophers. I no longer feel bad for killing them because they are eating my vegetables. I was somewhat scared to take it off, but with my gloves on, it wasn’t that hard. I through him over the fence for some critter around here to eat.

Since I lost quite a few chard plants, I went out and got a few more. The picture on the right shows the new plants. It is rainbow chard and although I’m not the biggest fan of it, I do like the bright colors in the garden. There are white, yellow and pink stalks that look awesome with all the other leafy green plants growing.

Where the carrots and beets were, I decided to plant a few more cauliflower and romanesco broccoli plants. These are growing slowly, but it’ll be nice to have a harvest in early spring (I actually looked in one of the romanesco plants and saw what it looks like, definitely click the link to the wikipedia page). I also planted some more kale here because I don’t mind it in my salads. We also have been running some through my juicer and mixing it with apple or orange juice. It tastes good and is very healthy for you.

I also planted a few additional strawberries in the corner of the garden. I really like the fresh strawberries from the old garden so I wanted to get more in at my new plot. These are an ever bearing variety and I have been pulling flowers in hopes of having these plants develop a strong root system and produce bountiful harvests.

I purchased a dill plant and another oregano plant. I added these to the herb corner. I am hoping to use the dill when I make pickles with cucumbers from the garden. Last year I wanted to make pickles and didn’t get around to it…hoping we do this time since I have a monster bottle of vinegar sitting in the cupboard.

This picture is of the ‘left half’ of my garden. There is the broccoli in the lower left and the artichoke on the right, with peas along the fence. There are two new plants, a brussel sprout and another broccoli in the bottom center of the photo. Most of these new plants were leftovers from when I helped a friend plant a garden in plastic storage tubs. I took pics and will post them up here soon.

Here is the broccoli corner, and one brussel sprout plant on the left. In the broccoli closest to us, you can barely see the broccoli head. Once the head is ready, you cut it and then side shoots will form and you can harvest broccoli for at least two months (and who knows how much longer…first time growing but just ate two nice side shoots tonight for dinner)

Here is the close up shot. It’s blurry…I’ll work on that in future pics.

My has the artichoke grown. First time growing one of these and have no clue how big it’ll end up

And lastly, some of the peas are ready for harvest. I use them on salads, pods and all

I have been getting a lot of growth in my planter box during the last couple of weeks. I had my first harvest of baby greens. The spinach, swiss chard and cilantro made a nice salad. I tossed the greens with some balsamic vinegar. According to growingyourgreens you should eat greens when they are young and tender.

O.K. after the harvest this is what is going on currently in the box.

I removed the rosemary that was growing to make room for some basil plants. I put the rosemary in a pot to see if it will keep growing. I don’t use rosemary very often when I cook because it is a harsher tasting herb. If it lives great if not oh well.

The basil is still small, but they where growing in one small area and needed to be thinned. Fresh basil is one of my favorite herbs. I just love the smell and taste.

After the harvest for my salad, the swiss chard is still going strong with plenty of small shoots coming up.

The spinach on the other hand is coming back a little slower than the swiss chard. On this end of the box there is a small draft from the window. This could be the cause of lack of growth. However, eating the baby spinach taste great.

The cilantro is growing nicely. This herb is one of Megan’s favorite. The seeds are called coriander and the plant is called cilantro. I use both at the restaurant. “Just Thinking” feat. Chali 2na will put this post to a close. Spring is coming soon!

These pictures are fours weeks after the last post, so around November 1st. You can see that the flowers at the end are dieing, but everything else looks great. Going around the picture clockwise from the flowers, there is cauliflower, lettuces along the border, and a kale plant in the corner. In the bottom left are carrots, above that near the path is the swiss chard, and to the left are some beets.

The broccoli, peas and brussel sprout grew quite a bit. The peas look good but they will soon die out… Once the broccoli grew larger, I was unable to get my big body to the fence to help them up the fence. I also lost two of the broccoli’s to gophers. Gophers will be the next blog topic since they have done nothing but cause trouble in the garden…

The carrots and beets that we inherited with the garden ended up getting pretty big. We only harvested a few carrots and one beet because of the gophers. The one food my dad doesn’t eat is beets so I was curious to try them. I also wanted to save him a few since he was coming to visit over thanksgiving. The chard that is planted next to them also fell victim to the gophers.

Here is a close up of the swiss chard and a few beets. I did take a few of the beet leaves and add them to my salads. I was hesitant at first, but they actually tasted really good. I’ve heard that about other brassica family plants but am too afraid to try them. I’ll get some when I get back from mexico and give them a try.

Here is the one beet we harvested and some romaine leaves that we pulled from a couple of our plants. Greens are pretty easy to grow and I tend to not eat the salad out of the bags very fast and end up throwing it out. The lettuce out of the garden is nice and fresh, tastes great and lasts longer in the fridge. I’ve been able to pick enough to have a large salad every other day.

I have one last picture of a radish we pulled. We tried growing them at the house in a planted box, but they weren’t doing well. I moved the planter box to the garden and will try growing them there.

I final purchased a grow light for my planter box that I built last summer. It has two T5 high out blubs, and it is about 4 feet long. I have it on a timer with 10 hours on and 14 hours off.

I have planted swiss chard, spinach, cilantro, basil, and some random left over seeds. The problem that I am having is keeping the planter box warm during this time of year. However, seeds are starting to germinate.

I built the stand that the light is on from PVC pipping and buried it the box.

About a year ago, I moved one block from the Ocean Beach Community Garden. I called to see if there were any open plots but there were none. I was put on the waiting list and finally received a plot in late September.

This is the entrance to the garden. It has a nice archway to go through before getting to the locked gate. There are 51 plots in the garden, but 2 are used for chickens and ducks. I have received plenty of chicken eggs and 2 duck eggs from the garden. The eggs are tastier than store bought eggs. I used the duck eggs to make some Christmas cookies and they were uber tasty. To get to my garden plot, you go through the gate and make your first left and walk past two gardens and it’ll be on the right. Most of the plots are 10 feet by 20 feet depending on where the plot is located.

The picture to the right is the plot that I have. This picture was taken a few days after I started to weed out the plot. The plot was completely covered with weeds, along with those flowers, some carrots and beets, and an artichoke plant. My plot receives full sun and I can’t wait to grow summer crops! The garden has a bunch of garbage cans for green waste. I think I loaded three of them after all the weeding.

Speaking of weeding, here’s a picture of me digging into the ground to loosen them up before pulling them out. It’s been a while since my last post, but you can tell I haven’t upgraded my wardrode…still rocking the sleeveless Corona shirt. We had some really nice weather out here in San Diego last fall which really made it easy to get out there and churn through the plot.

So after weeding was completed, it was time to plant. There is a fence that wraps around one end of my garden. I decided to plant peas along the fence so that they can climb up it. The plant on the far right is an artichoke. The previous owner had dug out the artichoke and left it in a garbage can. I pulled it out and replanted it since I had never grown one before.

This is across from the other peas. You can see the rest of the fence and more peas next to it. I decided to plant broccoli in this corner and a brussel sprout plant is on the far left. It’s fun seeing these pictures now because these plants are monsters now. I have been eating broccoli pretty much every day for the past two weeks.

I planted 2 purple and 2 yellow cauliflowers, some romaine, and a dinosaur kale plant. I didn’t know there were different colors of cauliflower until I found these at the nursery. Kale was an experiment and it turns out that it is super healthy for you and doesn’t taste bad like I imagined. You should check out this recipe if you like kale.

Here’s a picture of some of the beets and carrots that were in the plot when I took it over. My dad hates beets so I’ve never eaten one. As you’ll learn, we ended up having gopher problems and were unable to eat any of the beets. We got a couple carrots, but the gophers got the rest… There is also some swiss chard growing here too. The gophers will eventually eat 5 of the 6 plants…

In this corner of the garden, I planted a bunch of ever bearing strawberries. They taste great straight from the garden. Eventually I ripped up the flowers when they were dieing and planted 6 more strawberry plants. I have been pulling the flowers since I have planted them in order for them to grow a nice root system to supply me with bigger/more berries this summer.

In the corner opposite of the strawberries, I planted some herbs. I planted sage and lavender next to each other. We used some of the sage this past thanksgiving. I was told that sage and oregano are good things to plant to bring in the beneficial organisms. The lavender flowers are now blooming and I need to learn how to use it. I have seen a lot of drinks that had lavender in it so I’m interested in harvesting it. After ripping out the flowers, I additionally planted oregano and some dill in this herb corner. I would like to use the dill this summer when we are making pickles.

So that was all of the planting I did after weeding. The picture on the right is the garden after planting. I must have been shaking when I took the pic because it’s pretty blurry. Ill post a few more pictures below for you guys to check out. One is of the chickens and the one turkey, another of me bending over and weeding, and lastly a close up of the artichoke. I can’t wait to post the most recent pictures of it…it’s taking over the plot!